I’m an artist, and I’m a fraud. Time to start over.

I began learning to draw a couple months shy of my 31st birthday. Fascinated at the time by the little fan art and comics I kept seeing on Tumblr and deeply wanting to try doing it myself, I bought some cheap pencils and paper, and started learning how to draw.

I found myself improving quickly, but it wasn’t long before my attempts at illustration got pushed aside when I discovered first watercolour, then oil painting. Then, I became obsessed with realism and painting and drawing fine, tiny details.

This caused some awful habits to develop. See, in realism, the vast majority of artists trace a reference photo and then focus on the technical skills required to replicate that photo in pencil, paint or charcoal, etc. Sure, you can be creative with your photo references, but very few of us actually draw the pictures we create. We simply trace them, and then colour them in.

Lately this has started to wear on me. I feel like a fraud. I don’t enjoy it anymore.

At the time of writing I’ve been drawing for about 12 years, and I still can’t properly draw a whole human body. I struggle with drawing hair. I have ‘same face’ syndrome. I haven’t drawn a person in three years full stop. Could I? Yes, if I actually put my mind to it and learned, but I developed a terrible habit of avoiding the art that would turn out bad and focusing only on what turned out good enough to display to others.

I know I am not alone in this, but lately I’ve been pulled back to wanting to try illustration again. I have had an idea for a comic in my head for almost half a decade. The characters, the world lore, everything down to the minute details is all swimming around in my head, rent free.

In order to actually manifest this into reality, to get my idea out there, I have to go back to basics and essentially “learn to draw” all over again. This is really hard, because it’s humbling. To have “been an artist” for over a decade, but be unable to successfully draw a human body?

That’s not too fun to admit, let me tell you. Especially when people see your realism work and don’t understand that “transferring” (aka tracing a photo) is a normal, accepted practice that nobody really talks about doing.

So, here I am, confessing my little sin. I want to make my comic ideas a reality. I want you all to enjoy the ideas bouncing around in my head.

Therefore, it’s time to learn how to draw. Again.